MORETHANFIVE WINS CONNECT6 TOURNAMENT

The game Connect6, a kind of six-in-a-row game, was first introduced by Wu and Huang (2005) and then described in more detail by Wu, Huang, and Chang (2006). The rules of Connect6 are very simple. Two players, henceforth represented as B (designated as the first player) and W, alternately place two stones, Black and White respectively, on one empty intersection of an 19×19 board, except for that B places one stone initially. The player who first obtains six consecutive stones (horizontally, vertically or diagonally) wins the game. When all intersections on the board are occupied without connecting six, the game draws. In the tournament, the games were played according to a round-robin system in which one program played twice against all the other programs. In each game, every program had to complete all of its moves in 30 minutes. For each game, the winner scored 2 points and the loser scored nothing. For a draw, both scored 1.